Yoga Ecology Surf Retreats, blissology, ocean conservation, ocean worshipping, yoga dvds, yoga practice, yoga teacher training, yoga videos
Tags: YES Yoga Ecology Surf Retreats Unplugging Technology Drain Rejuvinvate Connection
Haramara… The name refers to a Native Huichol word for ‘mother ocean’. As and ocean worshipper, I knew I had found the right spot.
I am sitting in our open air breakfast palapa watching the morning light from the east lighting up the tops of the tallest trees on the western slope. Brilliant shades of light green stand out from the shadows of dense jungle canopy.
The water is azur and calm. Tranquilo. My Mind is at ease. I notice all the splendors in front of me. The hummingbirds, the soaring hawks, the sounds of surf gently exploding from the beach below.
The morning yoga and meditation in warm sunlight helped provide the clarity as did the most tasty healthy food on the planet, but what really makes this clarity so powerful is being unplugged. Frankly, my life is filled with beauty, yoga and healthy food but the internet, phone, emails and so much time in front of el computadora has an insidious soul sucking effect on all of us.
I was tricked. I didn’t even know that there was no internet here before coming. No phone, no electricidad. Our rooms have all the luxuries you could ask for, an amazing view, simple elegance, but they are little by candles and lamps.
This brings us into tune with the natural rhythms our ancestors must have felt before living in an electric grid called the city. We sleep early and wake early with morning sunlight. The stars are always in view. We are unplugged from the world of electronics and in touch with the real internet. The unfathomably large world wide web of life.
How amazing it would be if we could bring this way of living back into modern life. I sigh as I consider our exposure to technology increases every year. I think of the beauty of traditions like a Sabbath where you shut it all down and connect to what really matters. We need this. I make a deeper resolve to take time at places like Haramara where the big picture comes into view and to make a mission of bringing people to places like this. I smile and think of what a great offering these YES retreats are.
Then I drift back into my surrounding. Absorbed in the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings and the faint background hum of a bee…
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blissology, yoga dvds, yoga practice, yoga teacher training, yoga videos
1. Find a friend
Find a partner or a group and join it. From AA to Buddhist Meditation committing to a discipline is much more fun and easy when you can be motivated by a friend with similar goals.
we get along even better with yoga
2. Don’t just do it for you, do it for your relationships:
Of course you want to look and feel amazing. This is the reason why we exercise, practice yoga or mediation, but you have an obligation in all relationships whether it is with people you work with or to your spouse to be at peace with your mind and body. And if you don’t have an intimate relationship with someone, feeling great is the best way to attract others.
3. Commit to a Role Model
Whether you want a body like Madonna and a heart like Mother Teresa, you can have it -the mind is that powerful. Stay inspired by cutting out photos of people who represent these qualities and keep them in your wallet, on your mirror or on the dashboard of your car. Let their example always be a part of who you want to be.
4. Follow the “Feel Good Principle”:
Lower the bar. Exercise because you want to feel better. It feels great just to say “I want to feel better,” doesn’t it? You don’t have to have a perfect body, or become an uber-flexible yogi, sometimes so much pressure takes the joy out of things. Go to your classes because you want to feel better than you do right now. Once you start feeling better, momentum is created and we eat healthier food, are more motivated to exercise and continue in our evolution of our consciousness.
i love supeflow because it feels good!
5. Get up to your nipple line:
Sometimes if we set a goal of running a marathon or practicing yoga every day for 2 months, it can seem so unreachable. Immerse yourself in your activity enough to create a good habit by committing to 20-30 minutes per day for 3 or 4 days a week. It’s like swimming in chilly water, if you only go to your ankles, you probably won’t go, but if you can just commit to make it to the nipple line, chances are much higher that you will take the full plunge.
6. Overcome inertia:
As you may remember from high school Physics, bodies that are at rest tend to stay at rest and bodies that are in motion tend to stay in motion. Inertia is called ‘Tamas’ in Yoga. Taking the first step to overcome inertia is the hardest after the holidays because we have so much heaviness in our body and mind from all that egg nog and chocolate. To overcome inertia use some of the other tips in this article and visualize how good you felt after you did the activity you want to pursue. Feel the looseness in your muscle fibers, the lightness of heart, the inner strength you feel after your yoga class or workout. You know you want that feeling again, so what are you waiting for? Seize the day and create the life you really want.
feel as good as possible: why bob around when you can surf?
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blissology, yoga and athletics, yoga practice, yoga teacher training
Tags: yoga poses teacher training eoin eion finn pigeon pose kapotasana knee safety function positive force alignment course vancouver practice
This information is used a lot in our Positive Force Course and so key for hip opening. We have been dealing with hips opening a lot, our new dvd with Olympic athletes and our cross Canada Tour is called the “Pursuit of Happy Hips”
If poses were rock bands, pigeon poses would be the U2 of the yoga world. People love hip opening. And for good reasons. The hips mark the transition from the upper to lower body. If you hips are tight all movements are inefficient. Because body and mind are one connected unit when we are can’t move in our hips, we feel old and rigid. There is so much wisdom to colloquial sayings like ‘tight assed.’
Every time i ask in our Vancouver classes what poses people want to request, It’s like asking a 3rd grade class who wants candy… hands in the air, excitement mounting, the overwhelming consensus is “hips.” 20 voices say it unison.
Bottom line is, we feel amazing after opening up our hips. Technically hip opening involves a wide range of movements at the hip joint, but the one most people think of refer to opening up the biggest and bulkiest skeletal muscle in the body, the Gluteus Maximus. There are smaller, underlying muscles that do the same action, but we won’t get into that here.
The problem is because this muscle is so strong, it wants to have it’s way and restricted movements at one joint show up at least two joints down the chain. This would mean the knee and ankle joint are at risk from a strong (doesn’t that sound better than tight) Gluteus Maximus muscle.
Anatomically, to stretch ‘the glutes’ we need to do a few key actions at the hip joint:
1) Flexion meaning the front upper pelvis need to come forward towards the thigh bone.
and 2) External Rotation meaning the the front of the thigh bone rolls away from the centre line of the body (if the foot follows this thigh rotation the toes will roll outwards and the heel points in)
Give and take:
Now let’s talk knees. The knee is made mainly of the meeting place of the thigh bone, the femur and the shin bone, the tibia. There are two more bones, but don’t worry about them for now. The thigh bone you know roughly, but to familiarize yourself with the tibia, it is that bone that you whack in the middle of the night when you are walking around in the dark looking for the toilet. You can reach down and tap it. It really is prominent.
If you straighten the leg, notice that the if you were to brace the thigh bone, it is not possible to rotate the shin bone. As soon as you bend the knee the shin bone does rotate a little side to side. Thank god, we are not made like the action figures you owned as a kid, where the knee joint is a complete hinge. These rotations allow for a lot of movement possibilities. However, this is the trade off of the body, where there is movement, there is a higher likelihood of less stability and it puts the soft tissues like the tendons and ligaments more at risk of damage.
So how do you stretch ‘the hips’ and not hurt the knee?
There are a few options.
They mostly involve decreasing the downward force (torque) on the knee joint.
1) bring the front leg heel closer to the pelvis so the knee is more bent
2) bring the back knee closer further forward so the hips are further off the floor
3) use a block under the front, bent leg
4) if none of this works do supine pigeon
Make sure that your inner legs, adductors are engaged and use a slight engagement of the muscles to provide an upward lift
If pigeon pose still hurts your knee, talk to a professional or a skilled yoga instructor.
We have a big knee safety part of our Positive Force Alignment Course - the major intention of the course is making your yoga more therapeutic, safe and fun. Next one is Nov 6 in Vancouver.
Continue doing your path of feeling good.
Peace
Eoin
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Yoga Ecology Surf Retreats, blissology, ocean conservation, ocean worshipping, yoga practice, yoga teacher training
with each year the path and passion inside me becomes more and more defined. the seed of the heart is flowering into some amazing vision.
the blissology path is about reflecting on our intentions and our actions so that we can to balance our personal desires with the web of life.
i have been trying to make what am doing less about me and more about united people with a similar vision both in how we practice yoga but even more importantly a vision for people who practice Yoga with a capital Y, that is people who live from an all things connected place even if they can’t do one physical yoga pose.
i have been thinking for a while about how to represent this idea as an image
and voila, the blissology logo
the image came after months and years of playing with ideas last winter. it solidified in the foothills of the himalayas in mashobra, india, a very soulful place.
this is the what i sent back to mike b our graphic designer.
the idea is the circle in the middle represents the still place inside.
getting in touch with this place ignites the fame of the heart
we can then light the fire in our personal relationships
our communities
and the whole web of life, including not just people, but all species that walk, swim and slither in our forests, lakes, oceans and air and soil…
not only is it a flame of joy and love, but the image represents a teardrop, because it our deep grief that opens us up to the vibration of love and the wisdom of the heart.
finding that perfect balance of achieving personal desires an minimizing our harm to the web of life, that is blissology path. it all happens by staying connected to a love that binds us all.
we want to open your inner blissologist and keep that fire alive.
love is the ultimate renewable resource.
blissology and the bliss army video
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blissology, yoga and athletics, yoga music, yoga practice, yoga teacher training
Making seven DVDs in one year means that I have been spending a lot of time with musicians making music for the yoga DVDs. We finally released Liquid Soul from PY4H2 and have some AMAZING stuff lined up for these projects due out this fall.
The bottom line is that I love yoga to music. Playing Yoga to music is a lot like black licorice. Either you love it or you hate it. There are very few yoga practices that I play that don’t involve some kind of music in the background. I do appreciate silence and outdoor nature sounds from time to time, but music is life in that life is a series of vibrations. One of my goals in a yoga practice is to make my vibrations positive. Good music helps me find that.
Over the years, I have so go to albums that seems to get the most usage on my ipod. I am not big into Kirtan. It is ok, but often too sweet for me. Like drinking a case of diet coke or something. I like a lot of variety of sounds to practice to.
Some like Thom Yorke, Portishead and Massive Attack are darker edged and perhaps a little more unorthodox than you may think of. I like the melancholy tone. Perhaps it is all the years of winter rain in my DNA from my Irish ancestors, or perhaps it is my firm belief that the bliss path involves embracing the bitter in life. As Carl Jung says, “One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light. One becomes enlightened by making the darkness conscious.”
I dig doing yoga to the Blues – old school blues and I can never get sick of Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder
I super love world music, especially Arabic music. I can hang out and read Sufi poetry, light incense drink tea and listen to middle eastern music all day. It makes my yoga practice come alive.
Anyway, here is the list.
13 top ten yoga Albums
massive attack mezzanine – dark, chill and emotive. 
martin scorsese blues – breathing to the slow blues beat takes your blues away.
brian carson liquid soul - exactly the way i like yoga music, soulful but not overly sweet. (Definitely not the type of music you hear in the lineup of a health food store). finally on sale here.
portishead dummy – be moved by a wailing soul, introspective and deep.
nightmares on wax – inna space outta sound – a total grooving sound. slow and soulful, mixed with rhythmic and fluid.
ben harper and the blind boys of alabama – yeah, ben harper with a gospel sound. it was good in the past and it is still good.
thom yorke eraser - the radiohead singer knows how to bring pink floydesque sensibilities into a modern dark sound
moroccan spirit – this will make your yoga experience exotic and full of introspective, desert caravan power.
anouar brahem les pas du chat noir - the master oud player provides an elegant infusion of the essence of life deep into your heart and soul.
kerala dream – rara and his music masters have brought the sounds of south india to life in this powerful collection. watch for some of this music on “every day yoga and mediation” this fall
mumbai mornings – d.j. tarun brings the indian sound to life in this compilation of modern indian sounds. listen for tarun’s tunes on the second Everyday Yoga and Meditation release”
various artists ‘chime’ - this is a recent addition to my library. just laid back and groovin’ lounge music that works with a yoga flow- Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder – african guitar and blues, slow and emotive.
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blissology
Hello from San Francisco. This is my last day away before heading back to BC after our 5 months of exploring Japan, Indo, Oz and India.
India is such an inspirational country. There is so much wisdom that comes from there. I had an amazing time going deeper into Ayurveda and Yoga and the culture in general. We had a great time at KARE Ayurvedic Retreat Centre outside Bombay in the lush mountains above a gorgeous lake. It is so mice to see Nature in India and not the crush of the urban density. I definitely had thoughts of the Jungle Book with me all the time. I also had my first trip to the Himalayas where there is so much beauty and high vibrations from years of spiritual practice, but so much of it is getting mowed down for human habitation. The big issue of our age. check out the video
I came to view the trucks on the highway as portal to the essence of this great land typified by color, commerce, chaos and soul. Nothing represents this to me like the trucks of india.
Colorful and bright, each one marking the driver’s highest beliefs. Each piece of art is like a personal tattoo that creates a collective consciousness across every road in the country. Like bees that travel through a hive spreading the pheromones of the Queen, each truck spreads the soul of India along the asphalt pathways of the Indian heart.
Check out this video. Enjoy the ride. A big toast to you mother india! Horn OK Please. Blow it loud, baby!
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Yoga Ecology Surf Retreats, blissology, ocean worshipping, yoga teacher training
But the freshness and the nourishments in life come from the green leaves that absorb the energy of life and convert into fuel for change.
Here are some ways we can grow. Learn something new. A new skill, a new activity. Why is it that we take our kids to science exhibits and music classes but rarely expand our creative juices? Kids brains are malleable and sponges for a zesty life. We often buy into a myth that the goal of life is only financial or to settle into old habits. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Our work should be what helps us grow. Every interaction with people in our business life is a chance to grow new networks, to grow our hearts and mind bigger. Cease the chance.
Even in our relationships, we always spend so much time justifying how we are justified in maintaining personality traits that may or may not serve us. You are more malleable than you think. When people criticize you, you may feel angry and hurt, but perhaps there is a chance to grow there. Perhaps there may be a great mirror being held up by someone we don’t like at that moment.
As an example, I once lived in a group setting where there were several couples living on the same property. One of the women had a child and her world seemed to revolve around the needs of that child. Even though she was a kind person, unconsciously other people came second. It was a case of crossing the line between mothering and smothering.
The other woman in the group felt like she should discipline her child more and respect the needs of the adults. This is a lesson best learned early in life.
The situation came to a head and it seemed like when you saw it from the outside, both parties were offering amazing opportunities for the other to grow. All they had to do was let down their defenses and see it. To stop rooting their personality traits deeper into the ground and grow in a fresh new way.
Remember every challenge is an opportunity to shed our old skin and create a new fresh perspective finally tuned for the bliss path. The snake is a revered creature in many native American and Hindu cultures, because once a month a new skin is shed.
At any age, this is a valuable process. May your leaves stay green and budding.
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Uncategorized, ocean worshipping, yoga and athletics, yoga practice
March has been a truly inspiration month. We have been creating the most powerful and impactful project to date. We have just shot not one, but 6 yoga routines plus 7 meditation ones. Each one has a totally different feel so you are sure to be inspired.
There is a lot more to be said, but we are about eighty percent finished the filming. We’ll fill you in on the details later, but just know that you will freak when you see the scale of what we are up too. You can always take a peak here
Now that the filming is “in the can”, we are fully catching our breath. We intend to enjoy a little more of the splendors of Bali and Indonesian living. We love the village life here. The way people, and dogs and even chickens use the street as a collective backyard to lounge and socialize. There are thatched roof huts everywhere where groups of people lounge lazily shaded from the afternoon heat. It is good to see that even though the fast paced tourist culture has been transplanted on Bali life that the social network is so strong
We just went through Nyepi, the Hindu New Year for the Balinese and there are decorations, offerings, music, parades and purification ceremonies everywhere. We have been deeply initiated into the soulfulness of the Balinese Heart.
April finds us in Australia, where we are absolutely loving life. Watching the ASP Surfing World Tour in Bell’s Beach and surfing everyday and then off to teach in Sydney for the Australian Yoga Conference.
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blissology, ocean worshipping, yoga practice
It’s been a month since we left Canada and we are adapting to life in Bali has been interesting. The checkerboards prints you see draped on every statue and altar in Bali represent a belief in good and evil and the tension between the two. The checkerboard of Bali to me doesn’t seem to be about good and evil, just challenging and easy.
For sure Living in Bali has many pleasant sides. Like being warm. Ridiculously warm. The sun is so intense. I have tan lines on my back even though I have yet to expose my naked skin to the sun. You can get sunburned through a t-shirt or rash guard. It’s like being on a different planet here on the equator. Even Insiya who grew up in India has commented that she never understood the purpose of air conditioning until she started driving here.
And man, do we drive. The beaches where the surfing has been recently is in Nusa Dua which is a part of the island saved for swanky tourist hotels and not where the locals live. Thus, we have over a one hour drive each day to the beach when we decide to go. That combined with daily errands means we are in the car about 3-5 hours every day it seems.
I have mixed feelings about the driving. There are no rules. You can park anywhere, go as fast as slow as traffic will allow. You can drive the wrong way on the roads. Anything goes.
Call it anarchy, but it actually works out. I almost in a weird way prefer it to our over-regulated system where a lot of times I feel like the police are ticketing people as a source of revenue rather than maintaining order. If you ever drive in Indonesia, so far I have learned this: Do not drive slow and cautiously. If there is any gap in traffic a scooter will fill it – front, back, side, it doesn’t matter. Go fast and leave little space so people don’t swerve in front of you. The drivers are like water in a stream, always finding the path of least resistance. That is the Bali way, flow like water through chaos.
Sounds like mayhem, but there is a catch, the whole system functions because you have to put your self in harm’s way and let other drivers avoid you. There is a lot of trust in other people. The funny thing is, it somehow works.
When we arrive home, we travel down a narrow street lined with potholes, school children, scooters and an endless assortment of stray dogs and chickens. There is always something that reminds me of the simplicity of things.
A farmer with bags of rice piled five feet high on the back of scooter, bags of grain five feet wide hanging off the side. We pass a gentle looking ladies in sarongs with a tray of flowers incense and offerings called ‘chanang’ to put on an altar or at the side of a road. My neighbours all have pigs, geese, chickens, goats. Even though the morning sounds of farm animals mixed with every kind of tropical birdsong is my alarm clock, I always think, wow, there is a lot of the world who doesn’t even need to set foot in a grocery store.
On the complicated, there are many challenges consistently. We spend a lot of time searching for internet cafes that have some kind of decent bandwidth. I have been trying to upload a 3 minute video to youtube that would take me 2 minutes in Canada for a week now. Each café we go to says that it will take anywhere from 300 to 3,600 minutes to upload completely. Like scooter traffic, we find an opening and flow into it. The Bali dance is called adaptability.
And that brings up the beautiful thing about this culture. There is an acceptance to the flow of life, a spirit and philosophy that bomb blasts in Kuta couldn’t dim. A forgive and forget, accept and move on mentality that we all need a dose of.
As I walk past the temples on my way out to the beaches, I am infected by the spirit of this land. The steep waves that crash on the outer reefs fill me with what the Balinese call Taksu, a life force that animates us to live with courage and patience.
The YES retreat was a total blessing. Everyone had the best week ever. It took literally of a week of driving to so many internet cafes to be able to find the bandwidth to upload…
Next week finds us shooting a whole new set of DVDs and I pray that some of the soul of this amazing place will come through to living rooms across the world.
We’ll be sending photos.
Love,
Eoin and Insiya
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Yoga Ecology Surf Retreats, blissology, ocean conservation, ocean worshipping, yoga practice
tokyo was an amazing trip for us. it sure didn’t involve much sleep because there was so much to do in such a short period of time. the morning we arrived we learned of the untimely death of one of my closest friends, hitoshi. it rocked my world and put a new twist on our day and an incredible sadness that will be with me for life. i felt lucky in a way to be in tokyo where hitoshi is from as we got to see his mother before she left for the goodbye service in canada.
the workshops went amazing. i love teaching in japan, we had so much fun and there was great learning had by all. on sunday when the workshops were over we had an interview with a japanese magazine about healthy, green living called sotokoto. it was nice to share ideas about the ocean and how they relate to yoga and blissology.
right after, we connected with insiya’s friends for dinner in ginza on the other side of town. tokyo is massive and so slick. i love the public transportation there. after some good laughs we got home a little late, only to wake up again at 5:00 to head to tsukiji fish market
tsukiji market sells more fish in two weeks than the world’s next biggest fish market in england does in a year. to put it in perspective, 4, 409, 245 pounds of fish were sold every day! that’s a lot of bulging eyeballs and gills.
here’s a short video of our tour
the same day, we took the shinkansen from tokyo to osaka to connect with my old karate sensei, kenji. his life is simple and he quietly has such a positive effect on so many people. i have learned so much about karate, hari (japanese acupuncture) and blissology from him over the years. i feel lucky to have connected with kenji, the living human version of Yoda.
check out the video:
after a long day of traveling, we are finally in bali. today is orientation day to recover from many long days of traveling, giving and teaching, an deep emotional loss, and lots of fun too.
in closing, let me say that on the happy map, i define richness as “time spent alone or with friends and family in beautiful natural places.” after losing a dear friend, i can say, make time. hitoshi called me three times the day before we were scheduled to leave asking to go for a walk and i just could not fit it in because we had to have our house and home office packed up and moved in vancouver.
do not miss a chance to tell someone how much they mean to you. it sounds simple, but it is what life is all about.